Yvonne Webb

In the af­ter­math of the mur­der of an el­der­ly Chi­nese cou­ple in Cunu­pia, some 150 reg­is­tered busi­ness­men are call­ing for the in­ter­ven­tion of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Jack Warn­er to re­duce the scourge of crime in their com­mu­ni­ty. Rasheed Ali, pres­i­dent of the Cunu­pia Busi­ness As­so­ci­a­tion, said they have had enough. He said they were un­der con­stant at­tack, but had con­fi­dence that Warn­er could make a dif­fer­ence.

"Ban­dits just walk in­to peo­ple's busi­ness place, hold­ing them up, beat­ing them, rob­bing them...We have had enough," Ali said. The busi­ness­men met on Tues­day to dis­cuss the up­surge in crime in the area, af­ter the dou­ble mur­der of Wu Xiu Hua and her hus­band, Yang Jian Hua, both 60,of South­ern Main Road, Cunu­pia.

The death of the cou­ple has sparked un­prece­dent­ed com­ment from the Chi­nese Am­bas­sador and the Chi­nese com­mu­ni­ty who felt they were un­der at­tack. Ali said the mur­der of the busi­ness peo­ple was the prover­bial last straw and they are seek­ing an ur­gent meet­ing with Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice Dwayne Gibbs, Min­is­ter Warn­er and their Mem­bers of Par­lia­ment in­clud­ing Dr Tim Gopeesingh and Stephen Cadiz to come up with a plan to re­duce crime in the area.

He said while col­lec­tive­ly shut­ting down their busi­ness­es was an op­tion, there was no con­sid­er­a­tion of that at this time. That de­ci­sion would be a last re­sort he said.